In a world overrun by the dead, survival is a daily struggle. For Alex Mercer, every day is a battle against both the relentless walkers and the harsh realities of a shattered world. Haunted by the loss of her family and hardened by months of solita...
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"Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed." — Irene Peter.
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The woods were not the ideal place to be at night, but Alex Mercer needed the cover to get away from a large herd of deadlines that she had accidentally stumbled upon coming out of Atlanta. Her car had broken down the day before, and she didn't have the tools or know-how for siphoning gas out of the abandoned vehicles on the side of the road, so she had to throw her backpack on and continue on foot. That was when the deadies seemed to come out of nowhere. Or maybe they had been behind her the entire time, but she had been too lost in her daydreams to notice them approaching.
When their gasps and snarls grabbed her attention, she threw a terrified look over her shoulder, jumped over the guardrail along the side of the road, and tried running down the embankment. She caught her foot in a clump of soil and lost her balance. She somersaulted and rolled the rest of the way down, landing on her backpack like an overturned turtle. A few of the deadlines had begun to follow after her, so she had to get back up to her feet as quickly as possible.
Once upright again, she hobbled into the woods, wondering if she had sprained her ankle. It didn't hurt that bad, but it wasn't feeling fantastic, either. She couldn't focus on that, though. She had to focus on getting away and finding someplace to hide.
Alex did have a gun until recently when she ran out of bullets. All she had anymore to protect herself was a pocketknife, which would require getting up close and personal to the deadies, something she'd instead not do if it could be helped.
Pushing branches and leaves out of her face as she ran, Alex found a pretty gnarly tree, literally and figuratively. It was perfect for climbing, something her father would've built a treehouse in for her as a child. Reaching up, she grabbed the branches with her hands and lifted her legs, hooking her feet here and there to climb up high enough that the deadies couldn't reach her when they finally came that way.
Balancing between the trunk and a limb, she held on tight and waited with bated breath when two of the deadies began to stroll by none the wiser as to where she'd gone, and she smiled with success. But she wasn't about to count her chickens before they hatched. She watched them for a good while, wandering around the vicinity, not going anywhere, and she wondered if they could still smell her nearby. All she could do was stand there and wait, for however long she had to.
After an hour, they seemed to finally get distracted by a small animal in the brush and amble away, but Alex wasn't convinced it was safe to climb down just yet. Instead, she merely bent her knees and sat down on the branch to give her tired legs a rest from standing in the same position for so long. She turned her body slightly, so that she could sit on the limb with a leg dangling down over either side and she could lean back upon the trunk.
